one laptop per child

One Laptop per Child

Walter Bender

12 March 2008

one laptop per child

“Technology is anything invented after you were born.”—Alan Kay

one laptop per child

one laptop per child

a global transformation of educationIt's about giving children who don't have the

opportunity for learning that opportunity: so it's about access; it's about equity; and it's about giving the next generation of children in the developing world a bright and open future.

one laptop per child

children lack opportunity, not capability1. High-quality education for every child is

essential to provide an equitable and viable society;

2. A connected laptop computer is the most powerful tool for knowledge creation;

3. Access on a sufficient scale provides real benefits for learning.

one laptop per child

one laptop per child

one laptop per child

one laptop per child

a vaccine is an agent of change.

Jonas Salk made the analogy between education reform and immunology: both require scale and reach in order to be successful.

one laptop per child

a connected laptop is not a cure

but it is an agency through which children, their teachers, their families, and their communities can manufacture a cure.

They are tools with which to think, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics.

one laptop per child

three traits we humans all share

1. we learn (and teach);

2. we express; and

3. we are social.

one laptop per child

an expression machine

1. appropriate;

2. debug;

3. collaborate and critique.

one laptop per child

five principles

1. child ownership—use of the laptop at home;

2. low ages—ages 6 to 12—low floor, no ceiling;

3. saturation and

4. connection—collaborative and community;

5. free and open—the child is an active participant in a global learning community.

one laptop per child

in mathematics, our children live in a “linguistic desert.”—MinskyThe typical vocabulary of school-mathematics is

remarkably small: children learn some nouns and verbs—such as addition, fraction, quotient, divisor, rectangle, parallelogram, and cylinder, equation, variable, function, and graph.

It isn’t enough just to learn nouns; one also needs adequate adjectives: linear; discrete; isomorphic; etc.

one laptop per child

looking beyond instruction:

expressing,

constructing,

designing,

modeling,

imagining,

creating,

critiquing,

debugging,

collaborating

one laptop per child

exploring, expressing, and sharingweb browserebook readerchatrich media / music / video

games

word processingJournalwikigraphics; rich media creation

programming:Logo; Etoys; Scratch; Python; Csound; Forth; Javascript

one laptop per child

“let them have cell phones”

one laptop per child

ZoomInterface

friends view

home view

one laptop per child

Collaborative InterfaceWe leverage the mesh network to enable collaborative learning—the presence of children and teachers as collaborators and critiques is always present in the interface.

one laptop per child

Journal

one laptop per child

Transparency is empowering. Free and open-source software (and content) gives children—and their teachers— the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply.

appropriate to appropriate

one laptop per child

Technological incumbency —Calestous Juma

“Resistance to new technologies is strongest when it is perceived that the negative impacts will emerge in the short-run while the benefits will be realized in the long-run. The central policy challenge therefore is how to manage the interactions between new technologies and incumbent social and economic systems.”

one laptop per child

Frederick the Great re coffee

“It is disgusting to see the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country… If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors. Many battles have been fought and won on soldiers nourished on beer; and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon to ensure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war.”

one laptop per child

Juma’s “lessons from history”

perceptions of risks and benefits

demonization and prohibition

innovation and problem-solving

compatibility with tradition

threats to social order

trade and trust

one laptop per child

Sometimes the riskiest path is the status quo.

Hassounah